nationality ident/preferred language

English-speakers may just about be in the majority in SL at present but the trends suggest this will shortly cease to be the case. The chance of bumping into people who can't speak your language is increasing steeply, especially for players outside the US timezones. Can we please have some way of establishing and then indicating languages, displayed in the same ways and places as avatar names? In Europe, it's pretty common for people to understand more english than they are ready to present back, so they may well be able to drive the SL client but not make rapid-fire conversation.

A tag that puts the "numberplate domain" on the end of the avatar name would be a good start - so I'd be "Gummi Richthofen(GB)" and (to take a name in vain) Kyrah Abbatoir would get (DE) appended. Poles would have (P), etc, etc.

of course, this would have a little swarm of attending client mods for "My preferred language announce is:" (that's a pop-down) and "show/hide language tag".

In the profile there is already room to mention the languages one speak.

Personally I think a tag like this to name/groups-tittle will cause more confusing then something else.
Mostly before starting to talk to some, I read the persons profile. Often a lot of useful/nice information can be found there.

Morwen.

With respect - that works if you are in the habit of initiating one-to-ones. The dynamic is quite different in a room full of people. A simple tag, visible like the av name/group memebership, would be an at-a-glance thing, instead of having to wait for the profile to be supplied by the server.

Maybe, maybe not...

My own main language is not English, but Dutch. I always assume people speak English, when they don't react to what I say then I take a look at there profile.

Concerning a full room.... At busy places as for instance the welcome area, the tittles of people standing close to each other can be a problem (overlaping each other).

To my personal experience (but this can only be me), the profile comes up mostly quickly unless the lag is very heavy at that moment.

Anyway, such a tag should be optional in my opinion anyway. Maybe I don't want people to know that I am Dutch... because I don't want them to see me as cheese-girl on wooden shoes holding tullips in front of a windmill ^^.

Morwen.

Don't really need a tag.. enough room on profile as said before. Plus we don't need another 'stamp,' and since when does country of origin define languages?

Don't need it? turn it off. Coutnry not the best guide to language? Pick one that is, then.

As long as I can turn it off such that noone can see my base country, nor i see theirs, thats fine. I already get bad comments based on working nights.

I'm opposed. Folks that want to display what languages they speak or what nation-state they are the subjects of can put it in their about statement. and or attach a scripted object to their skull that uses llSetText to display it.